Virgin Media on Openreach: 8.5 million more premises
Virgin Media O2 is close to a deal to sell broadband over Openreach's full-fibre network, the Financial Times reported on 30 October. VMO2 would use Openreach to reach new customers where its own network does not go. Its Q3 results on 3 November confirmed the other half of the story: the upgrade of its cable network to full fibre "will be halted beyond existing commitments". The results did not mention Openreach. VMO2, BT and Openreach declined to comment on the FT report, and no terms have been reported.
If the deal goes ahead as reported, Point Topic's data shows VMO2 could sell full fibre in 8.5 million premises it cannot reach today. That would take Virgin Media from 57% to 82% of UK premises. In 5.2 million of the new premises, Openreach is the only full-fibre network.
The report comes at a difficult time for VMO2. It has about £22bn of debt and lease obligations, and its fixed business is still shrinking, if more slowly: it lost 22,100 consumer broadband customers in Q3, against 30,200 a year earlier, leaving 5.40 million, and consumer fixed ARPU fell 5% to £45.83. Alongside its results it launched a programme targeting about £0.8bn a year of cost savings by 2029. nexfibre's £2bn purchase of Netomnia, which would have extended VMO2's full-fibre reach, ran into trouble at the CMA in October. The CMA's interim report found the deal could substantially lessen competition in wholesale broadband, and the owners said they would contest the findings rather than offer remedies. A final decision is due by 15 December. VMO2 is reviewing its planned 2026 shareholder payouts and will update in early 2027, once the outcome is known.
Virgin Media's six flavours
In our data, Virgin Media reaches about 19.2 million premises today, through five kinds of network. Openreach would be a sixth.
Flavour | What it is | Premises | Openreach full fibre also present |
Cable | Cable (HFC, DOCSIS 3.1), not upgraded to full fibre | 9.6m | 7.1m (74%) |
Cable, 2 Gbps | Cable areas where Virgin Media already sells 2 Gbps (Gig2 hybrid) | 0.6m | 0.4m (73%) |
RFoG | Full fibre carrying cable signals, mostly in newer builds | 1.5m | 1.2m (82%) |
Project Mustang | Virgin Media's upgrade of its cable network to full fibre | 4.9m | 4.0m (82%) |
nexfibre | Full fibre built by the nexfibre joint venture | 2.6m | 2.2m (83%) |
Virgin Media today | 19.2m | 15.0m (78%) | |
Openreach (reported deal) | Openreach full fibre where Virgin Media has no network | 8.5m | – |
With Openreach | 27.7m |
Each postcode is counted once, under Virgin Media's best technology there.
On full fibre alone, Virgin Media reaches 9.0 million premises, 27% of the UK. Openreach would take that to 17.5 million, 52%. Adding the 2 Gbps cable areas, Virgin Media can sell 2 Gbps to 9.6 million premises today. With the full-fibre upgrade halted, the rest of the cable network stays on cable, but VMO2 plans a low-cost upgrade to bring 2 Gbps to most of it in 2027.
Why Openreach
For a company that has stopped building full fibre and is cutting costs, Openreach offers reach that no other network can match. Of Openreach's 23.5 million full-fibre premises in our data, 8.5 million are outside Virgin Media's footprint. By comparison, CityFibre's footprint adds 0.9 million premises outside Virgin Media's, and Netomnia's 0.5 million: most of both networks already overlaps Virgin Media. All the altnets together reach 5.9 million premises outside Virgin Media's footprint, but across many operators and many contracts.
VMO2's own figures show it already grows through partners. The homes passed by its own network have been flat at 16.2 million since early 2025, while its homes serviceable, which include partner networks such as nexfibre, rose to 18.8 million. Openreach would be by far its largest partner.
The new reach is spread across the UK, but the biggest relative change is outside the big cities. Virgin Media's reach in Wales would more than double (+135%), with large gains in Northern Ireland (+80%) and the South West (+71%). In London, where Virgin Media's cable network is densest, the increase is 22%.
Who it affects
Openreach-based ISPs. In the 5.2 million premises where Openreach is the only full fibre, BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Plusnet compete on the same network. VMO2 would join them, with its own mobile network to bundle. VMO2 says Virgin Media had the lowest broadband complaints of any major provider in Ofcom's latest data.
Openreach. On Point Topic's Global Broadband Statistics (GBS), Openreach's lines fell from 20.7 million in Q2 2024 to 19.1 million in Q2 2026, recently by about 190,000 to 200,000 a quarter. Over the same period its full-fibre lines grew to 9.3 million. Wholesale volume from VMO2 would offset part of that decline.
Altnets. VMO2 is one of the biggest retailers altnets could hope to sign as a wholesale customer, and in our data it sells only over its own networks and nexfibre. If this report is right, it has chosen Openreach. Where an altnet overlaps Openreach outside Virgin Media's footprint, VMO2 becomes a competitor on Openreach rather than a potential customer.
Cable alongside full fibre
Halting the upgrade leaves 7.5 million cable premises where Openreach full fibre is already present, 1.6 million of them in London. Openreach full fibre is also in about four-fifths of each of Virgin Media's full-fibre flavours, nexfibre included. Virgin Media already sells 2 Gbps over parts of its cable network, and plans to extend this to most of it in 2027. That would lift download speeds, but cable's upload speeds would remain well below full fibre's.
What to watch
Where VMO2 launches its first Openreach-based tariffs, at what speeds and prices, and how they compare with its own-network tariffs.
How Openreach-based ISPs respond on price in the areas VMO2 enters.
VMO2's 2 Gbps cable upgrade in 2027, and Openreach's move to 2 Gbps and faster products, which would let VMO2 match its own 2 Gbps offer over Openreach.
Whether VMO2 later uses Openreach inside its cable footprint. This has not been reported, and the 2 Gbps cable upgrade may weaken the case. If it did, its full-fibre reach would be 74% of UK premises.
The CMA's final decision on nexfibre and Netomnia, due by 15 December, and what it means for VMO2's 2026 shareholder payouts.
UK Plus subscribers: the region and local authority detail, Ofcom's Area 2 and Area 3, the altnets in VMO2's path, the prices it would be competing with, and subscriber and line trends. Subscribe or sign in
UK Availability subscribers can have the postcode-level data behind this piece at no extra charge: Virgin Media's flavour at every postcode, the new-reach flag, the altnets present and the Ofcom area. Contact us
How our figures compare
Virgin Media footprint | of which full fibre | New reach via Openreach | |
VMO2 (Q3 2026 results) | 18.8m serviceable | 9.4m | – |
thinkbroadband (30 October) | 19.0m–19.2m | 9.1m | 8.8m |
Point Topic (September 2026 build) | 19.2m | 9.0m | 8.5m |
The footprint figures are close. VMO2's full-fibre figure of 9.4 million, which includes nexfibre, is higher than ours and thinkbroadband's. VMO2 counts premises where it or a partner has deployed full fibre, which by its own definition need not yet be serviceable; we count where a network is available. Our new-reach figure is lower than thinkbroadband's mainly because we count by postcode: where Virgin Media covers part of a postcode, we treat the whole postcode as Virgin Media's, which takes it out of the new reach. Openreach's full-fibre footprint is also growing every month, so the date of each source matters.
How we count
Premises: all premises in postcodes where a network is present. This somewhat overstates reach at the edges, and applies equally to every network compared here.
Virgin Media: its cable, 2 Gbps cable, RFoG and Project Mustang networks, and nexfibre. Each postcode is counted once, under the best of these present: nexfibre, then Project Mustang, then RFoG, then 2 Gbps cable, then cable.
New reach: postcodes with Openreach full fibre and none of Virgin Media's networks.
Altnets: full-fibre networks owned by alternative network operators, excluding nexfibre.
Caveats
The deal is reported, not confirmed, and its terms are not public. The 8.5 million covers only premises with no Virgin Media network today. Whether VMO2 would also use Openreach inside its own footprint has not been reported.
Footprint figures are Point Topic estimates from our Unit Postcode (UPC) dataset, September 2026 build. VMO2's own figures are from its Q3 2026 results (3 November 2026).
Subscriber and line figures are from GBS, latest quarter Q2 2026. Q3 2026 will follow.
Data: Point Topic Unit Postcode (UPC) footprint estimates, Global Broadband Statistics (GBS); Virgin Media O2 Q3 2026 results. Analysis November 2026.
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